Twilight
by Phina Tera
Summary: Alec thinks that Max is all black and white.  She's hard, sharp edges of certainty.


**Title:** Twilight  
**Rating: **M; mentions of prostitution, drug use, assassination, theft  
**Pairing: **implied Alec/OMC  
**Spoilers: **up to and including season 2  
**Disclaimer: **All _Dark Angel_ characters belong to James Cameron, Charles H. Englee, et al. No profit made in the creation of this.  
**Notes:** Comments and crit welcome.

Max thinks Alec doesn't understand why she loves Logan and he's not going to disabuse her of that idea – not after the painful mess that Berrisford's reappearance had made of his life. He understands too well. Logan is safe, Logan is smart, Logan is normal — human, a real man. 

Sometimes he thinks he might love Max but then she'll look at him in disgust over some piece of petty crime and he'll remember that Max can't live in a world of greys — not when she's trying so hard to be right, to be perfect, to be just, to do nothing Manticore would ever have approved their soldiers doing. Max is all black and white, hard, sharp edges of certainty. She won't see that rifling through the pockets of knocked out steel-heads isn't so wrong – not when they would have done the same thing to him.

Alec keeps dealing but now he makes sure that Max doesn't know because she can't see drugs as any good. He can understand wanting a few hours of chemical bliss when the world is still broken from the pulse and only slowly staggering to its feet — besides if he doesn't do it somebody else will and he won't get the cash. Manticore might not have encouraged original thought but it taught its soldiers to be survivors if only so they could live to return to base to be used again. He hands over the flimsy sheet of drug laced paper and ruffles the cash he gets in exchanges; long practice lets him know it's not counterfeit just by the feel of it rubbing against his fingers. The man hurries into the shadows and Alec walks away confident that even if somebody did see his little business deal they'd never try to roll him. He's got a hard won reputation. It protects him (Max can't really understand the value of a reputation unless it gets her something she wants) so he only gets the desperate and the green coming after him. He hasn't had that happen in six months. Down here, in the deep warren of underground car parks and vacant buildings housing squatters and outlaws he isn't Alec, the transgenic freak, he's just a guy who can hook you up. Down here nobody asks questions. Down here the past is for you alone and you can reinvent yourself. His reputation is all him and his skills not one whisper of his transgenic nature tainting it into something he hasn't earned with his own body.

In the light with Max there are expectations because Max has become default leader and she wants them to be the good guys. Alec will help because it feels right; for all her naivety Max is right about sticking with your family. In Terminal City he has another reputation, one that isn't earned just with his body and his mouth. This reputation is helped by his X5 designation and by being Max's go to guy. He knows he's the one they come to if it's a problem more suited to quiet theft and quick death than talking and playing savior. Max doesn't say anything and they do their best to make sure she never knows about the missions that leave bodies in their wake. After all this time Alec is alright with playing Walsingham to Max's Elizabeth (he still finds it hard to believe how useful some of that old history is – not that Max could appreciate it since he learned it for a Manticore mission) because he can understand that some things have to be done no matter how repugnant they are and Max will never have the stomach for them. She left Manticore too early to have the guts to do some of those things and he doesn't blame her for it. Sometimes, if the memories are especially bad, he climbs onto the roof of one of the buildings and lets the sunrise over him. Sunrise can chase away the memories of being used, of playing the nervous boy unsure for his first time with a client, of waiting until the man is at the height of his thrust with head thrown back before he drives the knife into his chest again and again, letting the warm blood spatter over his naked body while his instructions to make it look like rage and panic play in his head. Max would never do that – she couldn't even do the little bit at the _Blowfish_ to keep their cover – Max never had to do a job or get sent to the lower level with the animals and the genetic creations gone wrong that Joshua tended. He'll never tell Max about those missions where his pretty face was a requirement because she won't understand. 

Joshua knows a little but not the whole thing although Alec suspects that he might have pieced most of it together by now. Joshua is a solid weight around him and he feels secure. They are AlecandJoshua now thrown together by being Max's oldest transgenic friends and somehow it's become just friends not Max's friends. Alec searches for new colours for Joshua just to see his delight over getting new paint and Joshua teaches him how to enjoy reading instead of just doing it to learn the way Manticore taught him. He teaches Joshua self-defense because it seems safer than having something like the mess with Annie happen again. Sometimes, Joshua brings him a stolen bottle of scotch and they drink together.

Alec leans against Joshua's side, letting the dog-man's heat seep into his bones. Joshua always smells like paint and turpentine. Alec can see the smears of paint on his hands when he drapes his arm over Alec's shoulders and pulls him close to his body. Alec does most of the drinking but Joshua lets him and strokes his back when he chokes up trying to talk about before because Max is a believer in talking to take the pain away and dull the memories (Logan confided that it took years for Max to understand that but now she thinks everyone should do it instantly). It's Joshua who cleans him up after any missions (he'll always think of them as missions even if he's picked them and there's nothing to do with Manticore), who sews up the knife slashes and rubs the little scars he's accumulating. Alec keeps Joshua out of danger as much as he can and Max helps because she doesn't want Joshua to loose his natural innocence. Alec just doesn't want to worry about him, wants to know he's safely away from humans who won't see him for who he really is.

In the end Max loves Logan because he's human and Alec can never be so he makes Max his sister and fits himself into the family of Manticore survivors she's gathering in Terminal City. Alec has his shadow work and his cash and Joshua's steady acceptance even though he'll never be as pure as Max wants them all to be. Max can't live with grey but Joshua can understand grey in all its shades.


End file.
